This started a few hours ago. I was in a conversation when a thought occurred. The idea would have merit, but I was amazed that no one has acted on this, not in years. The first culprit would be Ubisoft. They are so caught up in what they perceive to be innovation that actual innovation passes them by. They might be the biggest one, but they are not alone. In less then an hour I had the setting maturing in my brain. So lets take a look
This is the selfie system. A gamer can upload a selfie into the gaming portal, from there it goes to a server side processing module and from there it goes into the game. We have all these photo options. Yet, I reckon that millions of gamers would want to see themselves in Whiterun, standing in front of a dead Thunderjaw, standing in Gotham, being in Cyberpunk and some of these games would allow you to buy the postcard in the game (in Cyberpunk) and that postcard of you in the City Center could be ‘mailed’ to your game account, downloaded and you could put it on your social media. The funny thing is that this approach was an option 10 years ago. There are of course the funny flaky moments (an 21st century image of you in 9th century Bagdad), you name it, there are options.
The server-side processing module would be the IP of the gaming company and it could be applied to EVERY game they want to, and that one server-side module would be applied to EVERY game, so one module only and as the stage evolves that module just gets better and better. The portal might alter per game and per console, but there are already options with Sony, Nintendo likely too. PC had these options decades ago. The portal is the only one that might need adjusting for every game, as such every game will have a portal part, but that is actually the smallest part of all.
What baffles me is that no one has put this in place. Perhaps there are reasons and I reckon that there would be a need to set the legal premise that every uploader is legally responsible for WHAT they upload. Yet I do believe that this is a minor adjustment. It also corroborates with a thought I had years ago. To upload your image so that the character you play represents you. Wouldn’t it be great if you are the photo mode? I know that this cannot be done with every game, but a Nord in Solitude that looks like you? Skyrim has sold 60 million copies, that implies that well over 30% would want this. That is almost 20 million social media posts and those on multiple channels will show it everywhere. So why has no one considered and acted on this?
I refuse to believe that I am the first one, but the lack of actions on the other side (game developers) seem to imply that no one has seriously looked at that part of gaming. You see games can only exist as they cater to the gamer, that much has been a fact for decades. So what gives?
I will let you ponder that, for me Monday is only 14 hours away, enjoy the day you have.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 